The present invention relates generally to the field of display control and particularly to a timing controller for a display.
The significant development of multimedia technologies in the modern society is attributable primarily to the progress of semiconductor elements and display devices. In terms of displays, thin film transistor-liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) with a high quality, a high spatial utilization ratio, low power consumption and other advantages have become predominant.
Referring to FIG. 1, a typical TFT-LCD includes an upper substrate 200, a lower substrate 100 and a layer of liquid crystal 400 between the upper substrate 200 and the lower substrate 100, where a color filter layer is typically arranged on the upper substrate 200, the lower substrate 100 is integrated with thin film transistors, and further a polarizing sheet 300 is typically affixed respectively to the outsides of the upper substrate 200 and the lower substrate 100.
Referring to FIG. 2, a lower substrate of a TFT-LCD in the prior art structurally includes a plurality of intersecting scan lines 111 and data lines 121, and an array of pixel elements defined by the plurality of scan lines 111 and data lines 121, where the scan lines 111 are controlled by a scan line drive circuit 110, and the data lines 121 are controlled by a data line drive circuit 120. Particularly each of the pixel elements further includes a pixel electrode 140 and a thin film transistor 130 connected with the pixel electrode 140. A display signal on the data line 121 is transmitted to the pixel electrode 140 when the thin film transistor 130 is turned on, and the thin film transistor 130 is controlled by the scan line 111 to be turned on or turned off.
The foregoing TFT-LCD is typically driven by a timing controller (T-CON) chip at present in the industry. FIG. 3 illustrates the structure of a typical T-CON chip in the prior art. Referring to FIG. 3, the T-CON chip 1 typically includes an RGB data processing unit 11 and a timing controlling unit 12. The RGB data processing unit 11 is generally configured to perform, for example, a dithering process and vertical rate control on RGB input data to obtain RGB output data (RGB here refers to the RGB domain) to thereby achieve a better image display effect. The timing controlling unit 12 is primarily configured to convert input control signals input to the T-CON chip 1, such as for example, a clock signal (DCLK), a horizontal synchronization signal (HS), a vertical synchronization signal (VS), a data enabling signal (DE), and so on, into a source control signal and a gate control signal to drive the TFT-LCD.
However, strict timing constraint conditions imposed on the input control signals for the existing T-CON chip greatly limit the compatibility or applicability of the T-CON chip with certain TFT-LCDs. In general, a T-CON chip is compatible with only a limited number of TFT-LCDs with different resolutions. Internal settings in the T-CON chip must be modified or a different type of T-CON chip must be used to support another resolution. Even for TFT-LCDs with the same resolution, different T-CON chip manufactures also impose different timing constraint conditions on the input control signals. This situation also limits the universality of a T-CON chip.